


death, the abyss from where no traveler is permitted to return

by StripySock



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambivalent Body Attitudes, Beverly Katz Lives, Coming back from the dead, F/F, Fingerfucking, First Time, Homegrown psychiatry, a little dab of body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:35:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27199930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock
Summary: “You know,” Alana says, mostly a non-sequitur. “You aren’t the first. Is that comforting?”Beverly pauses over the milk, some people maintain a jug, she sticks to the carton. “Not the first to come back?” she says.“I was thinking, not the first to die,” Alana replies.
Relationships: Alana Bloom/Beverly Katz
Comments: 12
Kudos: 18
Collections: Fic In A Box





	death, the abyss from where no traveler is permitted to return

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



> With huge thanks to asuralucier who was of great help during this whole fic with both betaing and encouragement.
> 
> Title taken from George Washington.

Applying soap to her own mouth feels ridiculous. It should be a punishment handed down from an on-high righteous parent due to bad language, worse concepts. As it is, head down, avoiding her own eyes in the mirror, Beverly Katz is scrubbing the taste of dirt off her tongue. Even now when she closes her mouth after a snapped out sentence, she feels it, sticking to the back of her teeth, the roof of her mouth, cloying, crumbling, the taste of it dry. It's a psychosomatic ritual, the soap washing, the careful analytical part of her says, the bit that knows reality from the gut knowledge that she was buried alive even if no-one saw it.

Her saliva runs white in the sink, washes away with the tap water, and Beverly rests her head against the functional glass of the mirror in the fourth floor ladies’ room. Eyes closed, so she still doesn’t see herself.

Anyone else wouldn’t be cleared in the lab after a laborious disinterment. Anyone else wouldn’t have the great godlike hand of Jack Crawford resting on her shoulder, a blessing that ushers her back amongst the vials, the test tubes, the analysis of her own life and death. These days when Beverly rolls out the gurney, thrusts her fingers into the mouths of the dead, digs them into their wounds, she apologizes, inside her own head. Closes their glassy eyes and hopes that somewhere they don’t see. A battery of tests told her she was human, science, as she has been told- and told again many times, doesn’t lie. By any metric, Beverly is alive.

Or at least, she thinks, doing a very good impression of living.

Another thing no one considers about rising from the dead is the paperwork. Beverly spends most of an afternoon telling her bank that she's alive, listening to the flat incredulous voice on the other end. God she's glad probate moves slow at least, and that there was no-one close enough to her to phone up her cable company and cancel her internet. She can at least watch TV while she is on hold. One time, the person she's talking to, doesn't hit mute, and Beverly can hear the call centre supervisor on the other side "you can't be dead and then not dead."

 _Agreed_ , Beverly thinks silently. She's still not precisely sure which one she is.

Food is another minefield. Every bite is an exercise in self control. The first time Beverly eats meat, she almost throws up. In the innocuous plastic container of a microwave meal, lurked the supposition of what Hannibal had fed her. She tries vegetarian curry next, but it doesn't feel right either. It's the one issue she brings up with her counsellor, the one who had been assigned to her, the one she can't tell about anything real. 

"Make your own food," the counsellor advised her, kind soft brown eyes, legs crossed, skirt tugged down over recalcitrant knees. “Ground to plate. Something green, something lean.”

So mostly Beverly eats cereal. 

Eats cereal and tells the counsellor lies about how she’s feeling better. Or maybe they aren’t lies. Beverly’s not hundred percent sure what feeling good is anymore. Does it get better than this? She can’t remember.

It’s harder to pull the wool over Alana’s eyes. Her skirt is cut on purpose to sit just above the knee and she doesn't shift to pull it down. Nor does she let Beverly escape with a bland assurance that she's working through it all. "Working through what?" Alana says instead. She's not being paid for it, so her pencil isn't on the pad. Beverly wonders if she could nudge Alana's legs apart, and kiss the soft skin where her knee meets her thigh, stop the questions that way. _Sex,_ she thinks, _another way to prove you're not bones_.

It makes it harder that Alana doesn't pretend to be there as her therapist. She makes coffee, and leans against Beverly's counter, perched on her breakfast stool, fingers folded around the novelty mug that Beverly's god-niece got her for her birthday. _World's best forensic detective_. 

Beverly thinks, not for the first time, _not good enough_. 

Alana, it seems, is stuck on work mode. She leans forward, with her coffee in her hands, and her dark hair swinging about her face. "You can tell me," she says, softly, persuasively. The taste of coffee still doesn't erase the dirt in Beverly's mouth. She thinks, without much cruelty, of kissing Alana, and letting her taste it that way. Even better, of getting to her knees, and getting that stupid skirt up around Alana's thighs. _This_ , she thinks, as she fantasizes. _This is what hurt feels like_. She'd like to blame it on the grave, but this bit belongs to old Beverly. Sex as a coping mechanism is underrated and overutilized.

She doesn’t do what she’s thinking. Beverly sits and listens to the way that Alana probes out her hurts, unthinking, as though this is all in a day’s work. Maybe it is. Maybe every day Alana has a coffee date with a woman who came back to life after being stabbed by a devil in a loud suit. Beverly sips her coffee, eats her cookie, factory crumb after factory crumb, and looks at Alana’s shoes. Pricy, like her scarf and her suit and her glossy hair. If she was in the lab, she’d put a little sticky note beside Alana’s picture - _family money_?

Zeller would probably trot out a list of FBI consultant salaries. Price would point out the bargains on Ebay. Beverly, she kind of likes it. The contrast between Alana’s earnest truth - _I just want to help,_ and the self-evident reality of her shoes is amusing. Underneath the solid Stuart Weitzmann soles, she’d like to know if there’s a little bit of earth, if under Alana’s fingernails linger the indisputable forensic traces of mourning.

“Refill?” she offers when Alana stops.

Alana offers up her cup, a ready surrender, watches the little trickle from the machine. “You know,” she says, mostly a non-sequitur. “You aren’t the first. Is that comforting?”

Beverly pauses over the milk, some people maintain a jug, she sticks to the carton. “Not the first to come back?” she says. 

“I was thinking, not the first to die,” Alana says, turns her own untouched cookie over, between fingers that look like they’ve been impeccably groomed. Some patient manicurist had probably dug out the last traces of Beverly’s sojourn in the soil.

Beverly represses her first instinct, which is to throw back her head and laugh. She’s not hundred percent certain she’d be able to stop, and how much of a kick would that give Hannibal Lecter if those were the grounds she was held on. “Not the first or the thirty first,” she says instead. There’s a wicked, imperative instinct in her though. “Wouldn’t this whole apartment be better if it was pink silk lined?” she says. Sixth stir of her teaspoon.

“An expensive funeral policy,” Alana says, puts down her own teaspoon. “Would the FBI cover that past the excess?”

There’s not really a word for what they’re doing. If there was, it’d be half way between flirting and therapy in the dictionary, a pidgin concept. Beverly appreciates that in the abstract. It’s not the first time she’s flirted with Alana who has always hovered between appreciation and wariness. Now it’s like some barrier has been torn down between them. Alana’s close enough that Beverly could reach out and touch, about an arm’s length away, ankles wound around the bar of her chair. One of her heels looks like it’s about to fall off her foot, Beverly can’t quite tell if it’s intentional. 

“The FBI is notoriously cheap,” Beverly says. “Jack’s probably taking the cost of digging me up out of my salary.” She means it to be a joke, but it falls flat. Alana’s still, watching her. Beverly can just about see the little scribble she’s making in her memory. _K jokes to deflect._

Alana moves a little closer, eyes bright with intent. When she looks like that, it’s like nothing else exists. Beverly cringes inside herself at even thinking it, but she feels like Alana sees _her._ Not the mask of who she once was, the brisk pretence of Beverly Katz, but whatever it is that’s holding that mask up. She doesn’t think she’s reading this wrong, and she’s hungry, in a way that she hasn’t been hungry for anything at all since she came back. A human urge for touch that manifests as the need for sex. She can pick herself apart about as well as Alana can, having had years of practice.

Alana reaches her hand out first, brushes the skin of Beverly’s wrist, deliberate, intentional. When Beverly kisses her, she can feel Alana’s intake of breath, like maybe this isn’t a game she’d expected a resolution of so fast.

“We shouldn’t do this,” Alana says. Beverly is completely unsurprised by her words.

It’s not the first time she’s heard it across her life. _We shouldn’t do this - it’ll ruin our friendship_ , her first college girlfriend, head buried firmly in the sand even with Beverly’s head buried between her legs. We shouldn’t do this, we _work_ together, the slim blonde pathologist, wriggling up onto her own steel table, pulling Beverly in. Christ that was fucked up in retrospect, maybe Beverly should have turned up on her doorstep instead, scent of the grave still on her.

Once even a rogue _I_ _shouldn’t do this_ , from a woman with a paler circle of skin around the base of her ring finger. Regrets are nothing new for Beverly or the people she fucks.

There is a plethora of reasons why they shouldn’t. 

“Pick one reason,” Beverly says. “Make it convincing.” She’s murmuring the words into Alana’s skin. Work, maybe. The fact that three weeks ago, Beverly had been dead. That a good court defender could use this if it ever came to testifying against Hannibal. 

“Well for one, the curtains are open,” Alana says. She’s not exactly smiling, but there’s a hint of it, a surprising tear in her placidity, a rip in the quiet watchfulness that’s usually in character for her. There’s sharp teeth under the taut skin of her face, sometimes it seems she shows a glimpse of them. Beverly is not unreminded of Hannibal, the way the real him protruded out of his mask at the end, something alien under his suit and accent. 

The thought sends a sharp tickle down Beverly’s spine, a little lance of feeling that ends in her gut, aches dully along the scars that hold the fragile flesh of her body together. She smiles back, exposes her own teeth, maybe a warning, an animal instinct. She’s survived worse.

Beverly closes the curtains, turns back to Alana’s still expression, an ocean of patience. It rubs her wrong way. Beverly doesn’t know what she wants, turned upside down and inside out, something seething and ugly deep in her, just waiting for release. As though if she opened her mouth, something that isn’t her would crawl out, past the grave dirt. 

“Hey, hey,” Alana says, and she’s crossed the gap between them, hands reaching for Beverly’s unconsciously clenched hands. Alana rubs her fingers over them, over the jut of Beverly’s knuckles, turns Beverly’s hands up until they rest in her own. She’s warm, warmer than she looks. Alana’s got her head tilted on the side, all this sympathetic understanding just welling up in her eyes, she must buy it by the gallon from the drug store. 

_Does she like dead things?_ The thought comes unbidden. _Or just seeing how things work from the inside?_

“Hey,” Alana says again, softly. “You okay?” Beverly notices she hasn’t let go, has curled her fingers into the tight curl of Beverly’s hands. “Another time,” Alana says. She’s very close, Beverly can see the concerned curl of her mouth, the subdued pink of her lipstick. Alana’s empathy oozes over her. All that kindness. 

Beverly isn’t looking for kindness.

Alana doesn’t back away either, which surprises Beverly. It doesn’t feel like kindness, the way that Alana kisses back, sharp prickle of her teeth against Beverly’s mouth. Maybe that’s a kindness in itself. Alana’s mouth is as warm as her hands, and Beverly can smell expensive Chanel when she kisses Alana’s cheek, the curve of her jaw. Smells it even stronger when she moves aside Alana’s dark hair to kiss her neck, Alana obligingly tilting, agreeable in this as well, and it’s not even close to enough. 

Beverly doesn’t bite down, but she wants to, the force of the urge disturbs her, the kiss doesn’t feel like enough, even with the little noise Alana lets out at the press of her teeth, the way Alana’s hand skims up her arm and buries itself in Beverly’s hair as though to hold her closer. The tug of Alana’s fingers as she winds them in, is a dull ache at the roots, Beverly is reminded of the precision which allows doctors to hurt as they heal, or try to.

Alana's shirt is unsurprisingly silk, dull forest-green sheen of it, expensive, whisper of it against Beverly's cheek as she tucks herself between the soft collar and Alana's neck. "Hey," Alana says once again, and this time, the way she tugs at Beverly's hair is entirely deliberate before she lets go. Her hands as they go to the silk tie that holds the neck of her top together, are equally deliberate, as much as the look she gives Beverly at the same time. 

There's a fine gold chain around Alana’s neck, almost invisible against the paleness of her skin, the charm of it in the hollow of her neck, revealed as she unties the silk bow, reaches for the buttons. There's a bit of Beverly that wants to pull it off, over Alana’s head, or to tug at it, she wants something pretty destroyed, but instead she watches the deft nimbleness of Alana's fingers against the buttons, the stillness of the room a roar in her ears.

Alana’s bra is pretty, little pink rose in the centre of the cups, that matches her lipstick, and her top makes no sound as it hits the floor. Alana’s nervous, Beverly doesn’t need to see the almost invisible tremor that runs through her, or the way that she’s looking too steadily at Beverly. Not a blink. Classic sign of a liar. Amusing, Beverly thinks, from someone as attached to the truth as Alana. 

Beverly spares half a thought to be glad that she changed her sheets this morning. Some of the nuances of her old life, have taken a while to come back. Sheets, dirty or clean, are softer than earth. Alana takes her mind off it, by kissing her again, purposeful this time. Alana though, seems to feel no compunction, no hesitation as she nudges Beverly back onto the bed and then unzips her pencil skirt. She matches, of course she does.

It’s the work of seconds for Beverly to get out of her shirt, her slacks. This she knows, this she can do. If she does it right, it’ll be old times come again once more. Alana is soft on top of her, fever hot against Beverly’s skin, another question right there, about whether Alana runs warm, or Beverly runs cold - keeps about the temperature of a dissection room. Alana’s mouth lingers on hers, her body brackets Beverly from shoulder to hip to knee. 

Beverly is aware of the finest of tremors that run through her. If she were prone to fits of imagination, she’d imagine that the epicentre is the savage scarring across her abdomen. As it is, she just feels the shivers follow Alana’s fingertips, down the bones of her arms, to clasp, soft as snow at the hinge of Beverly’s elbows. In that moment she feels like a demonstration model held up in a classroom. _Recently revived adult female. Touch here to provoke arousal._

Whether she is or isn’t, it’s working. There’s a hum of arousal in Beverly, something warm in her gut, uncurling, and she’s pulling Alana down more firmly against her now, skimming her hands over Alana’s smooth back, the lace of her bra, unhooking it with ease. _This is real_ , she reminds herself. Comes back to Alana’s mouth again to kiss her, tug at her bottom lip with her teeth and swallow Alana’s gasp. Follows the line of her chain down to the hollow of her throat, kisses the skin underneath the charm, drags her teeth along the collarbone. Alana pushes a little more into her mouth, lets the bra drop between them.

Alana’s hair is everywhere, she sweeps it back impatiently, Beverly tugs it back, a little shield between her and the world. Alana’s body is functioning in the same sort of capacity really, and Beverly touches her in a way that feels greedy, bends further to nip at the curve of Alana’s breast, teeth flattened against her skin. 

The touch is rote, even if the feelings aren't. Beverly acts on instinct. Tilts her head down to kiss Alana's breasts as much as she can reach, Alana pushes down to meet her as though desperate for more sensation. Beverly presses her hand first along the indent of Alana's waist, the curve of her hip, slides it over the scanty lace of her matching underwear to press between her legs. Alana's hot there, even warmer than the rest of her, moves restlessly against Beverly's fingers, as though she's unsure about whether to press closer or back away. Beverly supposes, that like every animal, there's a finely tuned knowledge between carrion and food. It's the human mind that crosses that barrier. Hangs the pheasant for twenty-eight days and fucks the resurectee.

She presses her hand against Alana's cunt, and takes in air noiselessly, against Alana's mouth, returning again to kiss her, even as she hooks her fingers under the lace and slides between the delicate material and Alana's body. There's a readiness that surprises Beverly, the way that Alana seems to be waiting for this, wet and slick against her fingertips, uncertainty forgotten as she moves against Beverly's fingers, slides down her hand, to pull aside her underwear, spreading her thighs as she straddles Beverly a little more, sinking down over her hips. Alana's eyes are closed, even as she shudders, jerks closer, swallows Beverly's fingers easily, tugs at her thumb, just a little, until she finds Alana's clit, a little hidden, already swollen. In the back of her mind, Beverly considers, Alana on a kitchen stool, feet against the bar, listening as she unpicks Beverly's trauma, makes it palatable, makes it digestible. Wonders if Alana was already wet then, thighs pressed together under an unassuming skirt.

Beverly reads. Death takes some people like that, last burst of the survival instinct, last insistence of vitality. She can believe it, Alana is already flushed, down her cheeks and her chest, radiant warmth, nudges against Beverly's mouth, as Beverly rocks into her, Alana's stomach hollowing as she sucks in deep against the feel of it. Her mouth is open slightly, pink lipstick mostly rubbed off, a little of it clinging still to the curve of her lips. The move of Alana's hips are more insistent now, Beverly's hand a little cramped as she fucks Alana, back of her hand against the lace, thumb circling Alana's clit, teasing just a bit even as her fingers abandon the idea of teasing at all.

Alana's eyes are open now, hazy, peering down at Beverly, slow blink of them as Beverly grinds the palm of her hand fully against her cunt, sensation inside and out. Alana's twitching against her, pushing forward, wet enough to soak Beverly's hand now, her breath harsh as she fucks forward, tightens around Beverly. It's a pleasure, Beverly thinks, a little distantly, to watch someone else lose control. Maybe especially Alana, wound up clockwork of an ideal, taken to pieces at the hands of something bigger. Now they have something in common.

It's just a little more until Alana comes, convulses around her hand, and settles shaking on top of her hips, analytical interest already crawling back into her eyes, as she slides down Beverly's body, to her cunt. Perhaps not the first time, Beverly notes, her own brand of scrupulous accuracy, as Alana kisses her belly, her hips, the inside of her thighs, drags her teeth and her mouth across the expanse of Beverly's skin. Beverly's eyes shut, leaving her isolated and alone, somewhere dark behind them, unconscious once more and incapable. For a minute as though from a great distance, she feels Alana's tongue, her mouth, the touch of her hands, the way that to someone else, the person Beverly was once before, this would feel overpowering, feel good. Here, she's suspended at the touch of it, the wrongness and the rightness of someone this close, someone who halfway gets what she was, is. Then like something's snapped she's back in her own body, feeling it first hand.

When Alana fucks her, first with her tongue, then with her fingers, eager and raw, Beverly wants to fight back, wants to convulse and writhe, hold Alana’s head between her legs until she chokes, alien brush of need, a desperation inherent in herself. _Make me feel alive,_ she begs, and without hearing it, Alana does exactly that. Brings Beverly, heart-first, cunt-next, closer to the prospect of being alive again. She doesn’t make Alana gasp, suffocated-inhale against her skin. Instead she holds back her hands, brings one up to her mouth so she can bite in hard to her skin, a perfect indent set of teeth marks, the type you solve a crime with. 

It takes an embarrassingly little amount of time really, far less than before, as though every nerve in her body is ready and waiting for the slightest bit of stimulation. It doesn’t take much more than Alana between her legs, her eager tongue and nimble fingers, to coax an orgasm out of her. The way Alana works, careful and knowledgeable, as though this is something she's considered, is enough to bring Beverly off, leave her a victim once again of her own body. When she comes, it feels like the world’s going black, she spasms for a second, convinced that she’s dying once again, ragged gasp coming out her throat, high and thin.

At some point Beverly falls asleep, a hand’s span away from Alana, just close enough to feel the faintly ominous warmth of her skin. It’s almost the first time she’s slept, actual sleep, since she came back. She wakes up to her heart racing, takes her own pulse and averages it at 120 beats a minute. In her mind she’s still beating at the roof of her buried box, lies flat in the here and now, eyes unseeing, fixed on the ceiling above. She doesn’t move a limb as Alana breathes softly beside her, turns over in her sleep and throws an arm across Beverly’s chest.

In the abstract, of course Beverly’s alive. Her heart beats. She can feel it in the rabbit fast pulse of her wrist, the way that her chest moves under Alana’s arm. She doesn’t think the dead sweat like this either or can hold their breath for long seconds to prevent hyperventilation. The question really is - does a live person even need to consider those things?

An existential crisis at - she risks a quick look at her watch - only midnight. Fuck everything. Lying on her back, she watches the unchanging ceiling, in the dappled light of the outside, occasional slanting beam of light from a passing car. A shadow passes across the corner of the room, pauses and stops. She watches it with her heart in her mouth, forces her eyes closed, waits for ten long seconds. When she opens them again it’s still there, spilled inky black across the ceiling. 

Black like the color of the gap in her memory, that exists, clear and distinct between the moment she took her last breath, and the second she took her first. A black hole so much darker than the darkness that had surrounded her that it had existed as an entity in itself. Beverly thinks, suddenly, distinctly of the moment her box had broken open, as another car beam cuts across it. Alana makes a sleepy sound, something warm and real. On the surface, it comforts, but there's something dark and cold deep inside Beverly, that nothing human can touch.

 _When Lazarus came back from the dead,_ she thinks, _was it a blessing?_

Slowly, so slowly that Alana’s eyelids don’t even flicker, Beverly eases out from under her arm. Somewhere out there, beyond that patch of darkness, Hannibal waits. She can almost see him if she squeezes her eyes, so tight that fireworks burst beyond the unnatural red tinged black. There is a reason, she came back. Somewhere, in a dark cell, marked by his own unnatural captivity, Will Graham waits for the wheels of justice to grind, a specimen in small scale of Hannibal’s whims. In her own place, Beverly moves softly to her living room and opens up her laptop. Opens the small, secret file she’s already begun to populate.

She died at the end of Hannibal’s gutting knife. He buried her and he did not expect her to rise. Somewhere, she hopes savagely. Somewhere, he read the news and sat back, his impenetrable calm penetrated. Somewhere, he knows she’s coming for him. She has it seems, work to do.

From behind her, finger tips whisper down her arms and Alana leans close, Beverly can feel the gold of Alana’s charm touch her neck. “Start in Italy,” Alana says, with some certainty, brushes her mouth against Beverly’s ear, her cheek. “Make him pay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers for reading


End file.
